Thursday Memo

Hi Five Oakers,

I have a few things I want to share with you.

#1- This weekend’s message is PG-13 because it’s about sexuality. I will not be talking about how you should vote in the upcoming marriage amendment for the same reason I don’t address other political policies. (For a full explanation, go here.) But I will address the issues behind political policies. I’ve had people on both the “vote no” and “vote yes” sides say that what I’m doing is just a sneaky way of telling people how to vote, and I might as well just come out and be honest about it. I completely disagree! Here’s what I wrote a friend of mine yesterday who is of the “vote no” persuasion.

My overwhelming concern is discipleship. I think this issue is an opportunity to address how we read Scripture, how we live out our faith in the public square, how we love, who we follow, how we allow God to shape our identity, the nature of truth, the relevance of Scripture to everyday life and so much more. …I happen to believe (and our church and denomination believe) that the Bible is clearly and unequivocally for sexual intimacy only the context of the covenant of marriage between a man and woman. If I didn't address the topic right now when it's such a topic of discussion, I think it could be construed as pastoral malpractice or dishonesty. 

Let me just underscore that I am not going to comment on the merits of this particular law or on the merits of legislation (or this type of legislation) in this matter (or matters like this one). And it has absolutely nothing to do with our tax status. Again, my convictions and reasoning are clearly laid out here.

#2- We have over 60 families who have taken the Do You Devo? Challenge and more that are doing it that didn’t sign up. I love seeing whole families committed to hearing from God together regularly.

#3- Hundreds of you are participating in the Story of God study right now. I love hearing about what you’re learning. Several who have done it before are telling me about what they’re noticing this time around that they missed before. Some are passing typos on to me and that is very helpful. I will soon have the manuscript professionally edited, so that will help the editor. This copy was printed while still in the beta stage to meet the deadline. I was way more concerned with getting a flawed product in your hands than a perfect one when it’s too late. Just wait until you get to week 8 and find out I missed an entire day! I was thinking you might want to catch up on that day. Yeah, that's right. That's what I was thinking.

#4- Here’s a great picture of our church building from the sky taken by Five Oaker Gary Chambers.

#5- Tim Bubar is part of the team planning the next national EFree Students Challenge conference. This conference is such a positive spiritual catalyst in the lives of so thousands of students that I’m extremely proud of Tim for serving in this capacity. Here’s the team.

#6- If you’re a member, please read this memo point, even if you’re tempted to by-pass it once you see what it’s about. Okay, it’s about our by-laws. We’re always changing our church by-laws to keep up with our growth and changing circumstances. We’re proposing several key changes we'll vote on at the congregational meeting.

• One is to help protect our pastors and the church from lawsuits for refusing to do weddings that violate our biblical convictions.
• Two are long overdue given the size of our congregation and budget. We can’t continue to ask volunteers to audit our books given the enormity of the task, so we will be looking for outside help to do it. Our elected auditors from the congregation will examine the professional audit and communicate concerns and needed changes to the Board. We also need greater flexibility is choosing a Chairperson, Secretary and Treasurer. Larger churches in our denomination all vote for Board members (as we will continue to do), but many let the Board members vote for who will serve as Chair and Secretary. And they often assign a paid staff member as Treasurer because of the difficulties associated with having a volunteer in this position (i.e., timeliness and workload).

If you have any concerns about this, please do not wait until the Congregational Meeting to investigate. Talk to your Board members now and read the supporting materials here.  

#7- Don’t forget: The first service on Sundays will change to 9:15am on November 4 (the end of Daylight Savings Time). We are not adding to the length of our services. We are only trying to add more time for transitions between services. Things get really crazy in the Children’s Ministry check-in are when we have only 15-20 minutes to transition. Send me your questions if you have any about this change. We considered many options and I don’t want to over-communicate by including them here.  

See you on the weekend.

Blessing to you, Pastor Henry

Everybody's Talking About Civility

The Pioneer Press has a front-page article today noting recent outbursts from Representative Joe Wilson, Serena Williams and Kanye West. Chuck Colson weighs in on it in his BreakPoint commentary. Below are highlights of his commentary. I'll just add here that this is crucial for our witness to the world. We are missionaries in our world first and foremost. That has profound implications that believers seem to forget in the quest for more short-term gains. In addition, to our outreach, the lack of civility is taking a toll on believers as well, especially Christian leaders. Pastor Gordon MacDonald (who is one of the church's elder statesmen) has commented that a spirit of meanness had taken hold in the church and he doesn't see it subsiding any time soon.

Here are the highlights from Colson.

Restoring Civility
Take the Pledge
September 16, 2009

It will probably go down in history as the first presidential speech remembered not for what the President said, but for how a member of his audience responded.

Even if you didn’t watch Barack Obama’s health care address last week, I’m sure you’ve heard what happened. Obama had just finished saying that his health care plan would not cover illegal aliens. In response, Rep. Joe Wilson shouted out, “You lie!” shocking television audiences from coast to coast, not to mention the President.

Talking heads have spent the rest of the week talking about the need for civility in public discourse—and that’s a good thing. Two people who are likely paying close attention to this debate are men who are about as far apart politically as it’s possible to get. Mark DeMoss is the conservative president of the DeMoss Group. Lanny Davis is a former advisor to Bill and Hillary Clinton.

DeMoss and Davis—both concerned about the sharp decline in civility—have created an online forum called The Civility Project. Its goal: getting Americans to re-learn how to disagree without being so nasty to one another. They are inviting Americans of every political stripe to take a civility pledge, in which they commit to three things: “I will be civil in my public discourse and behavior. I will be respectful of others whether or not I agree with them. I will stand against incivility when I see it.”

Three cheers for them! Too many Americans think that it’s OK to simply shout down their opponents, malign their motives, or, when all else fails, make vicious personal attacks. I lived through this in Watergate, being spit upon by angry mobs.

...civility is a precondition for democratic dialogue. And civility is mandatory for Christians; Jesus told us to love our enemies, which would exclude us from making vicious verbal attacks against them.

I can’t excuse Rep. Wilson’s outburst. But I do understand his frustration. For months, President Obama himself has been repeatedly accusing his opponents of lying about his health care plan—just as he did in his speech before Congress. Even liberal CNN says Obama’s regular use of the word “lie” is “unstatesmanlike.”

...I am sure that Rep. Wilson, if he could re-live that moment, would not shout out at the President again. And, in a show of real civility, Wilson apologized to Obama, and the President accepted his apology. I commend them both.

It’s a positive step—albeit a small one—to restore civility to our national discourse.